


Luctus

by gemstonedragons



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alderaan, Alderaanian customs, Ben Organa, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Minor Leia Organa/Han Solo, Young Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 16:42:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11673066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gemstonedragons/pseuds/gemstonedragons
Summary: When Ben Organa is six years old, his mother still loves him.(Leia will always love her son. Even after...well...you know)





	Luctus

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posted from tumblr.
> 
> https://hailhailhail.tumblr.com/post/159819270084/when-ben-organa-is-six-years-old-his-mother-still

When Ben Organa is six years old, his mother still loves him.

(He doesn’t call himself Ben _Solo_ until much later. It is perhaps a shadow of things to come. A renaming is not something undertaken lightly.)

(Leia will always love her son. Even after– well. You know. )

He is six years old, and his mother braids his shaggy hair and tells him a story. It goes like this: 

_Once, there was a queen, beloved by her people. She was fair, and just, and she loved her planet deeply._

  
_How deep,_ he would ask, seriously. He was already a serious child, even then. And his mother would look into his eyes, and respond just as seriously, _Deeper than the waters of Naboo._

  
_The Queen fell in love, and married. Her marriage was a private one, but their love for each other was strong._

  
_How strong,_ he would ask. His mother would hold her tongue for a moment. Then, _stronger than a planet’s gravitational pull._

  
.

  
When he is six, she takes him from the empty hangar where the Falcon docks. 

His father is not there.

His mother, called General, now, and called Princess only by his father, calls him child-mine and little star. 

(She calls Kes Dameron’s son little pilot, and perhaps that too is a spectre of the future. Or a shadow of the legacy on his shoulders.)

(Ben’s skinny shoulders are to carry a different legacy. If only he chooses correctly.)

  
He is six, and his mother twists her hair into a braid of mourning, and teaches him the prayers of Alderaan. She tells him, in a solemn voice, the poems of sorrow. 

He is six, and his mother takes him to the roof of the hangar, and points to the stars.  
__  
There is a place out there, a place where no one lives, and it is where your grandfather died. It is the place where your grandmother died. It is where our people died.  


(Perhaps he is too young for this. It is a heavy heart that must soldier on as the last of their people.)

(Perhaps he is just old enough. When Leia was six, her mother told her a lie.)

(Breha had looked into her eyes, and braided her hair with the prayers for home, for peace, for prosperity. _You will always have Alderaan, daughter-mine_ )

Leia braids the plaits for remembrance behind Ben’s ear. He is too young for sorrow yet, she thinks.

  
(Sorrow, and painful shyness, those her son already knows well. His next skill is in acting. He plays the happy child well enough.)

.

  
He is six, and he asks his mother why Uncle Luke doesn’t know the same stories. 

  
He is six and his mother tells him about the man who fathered her. 

( _The man who stood by as Tarkin orphaned her._ )  
She does not call him Anakin.  
Ben is six years old and he does not know the truth. 

.

Kylo Ren is not six years old when his father dies.  
Kylo Ren is not six years old when the General drags him onto a emergency shuttle.  
Kylo Ren is not six years old when Starkiller falls.  
He wakes from the bacta tank and braids his hair with the prayers for remembrance.  
He does not braid mourning into his hair, despite the twitch of his hands.  
He is not six years old. He has no one to mourn but himself.


End file.
